Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Trump to Let Hillary Off the Hook?

Former Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway told “Morning Joe” Tuesday morning that Trump will not pursue criminal investigations into Hillary Clinton's use of a private server. Trump feels Clinton has “been through enough,” she said.

Co-host Mika Brzezinski read the breaking news before it was announced that Conway was the source.

“A source with direct knowledge of Donald Trump's thinking tells ”Morning Joe“ that the president-elect will not pursue any investigations into Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server, and also for the questions surrounding the Clinton Foundation.”

Conway later told “Morning Joe”:

“I think when the President-elect, who's also the head of your party, tells you before he's even inaugurated that he doesn't wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content.”

The announcement breaks Trump's campaign promise to appoint a special prosecutor, including during the second presidential debate — when he also dropped the “you'd be in jail” card on Hillary.

Could this be a head fake to prevent Obama from issuing a last minute pardon?

Anyway, I agree with the general principle that you should not be using the law to go after the losing opponent in a national election. That's banana republic style politics and we've had too much of that over the past 8 years.

I'm more forgiving of Hillary's State Dept. email shenanigans than the Clinton Foundation matter. It seems to me that the email matter, while an extremely reckless choice, and while done specifically to keep her other business secret, was less evilly motivated than the Clinton Foundation influence peddling scheme, which was all about using the power of the state for personal enrichment and power. Even when it's pretty clear that you could hang technical violations of national security on her (Comey didn't say she was innocent, just that it would be almost impossible to prosecute), the magnanimous thing to do is to issue a pardon, and tell her to go forth and sin no more. Like that will ever happen.

In light of Judicial Watch announcing the receipt of 508 documents related to Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, McClatchy’s Anita Kumar writes that the public can “expect periodic releases of records to continue through 2018, even though many Clinton critics have moved on following Donald Trump’s victory.”

Clinton’s lawyers certainly haven’t moved on, and on Monday they filed their objection to Judicial Watch’s request to compel Clinton to answer three interrogatories that were among 25 submitted by Judicial Watch. “Secretary Clinton answered the interrogatories to the best of her knowledge in good faith, and her answers are consistent with the voluminous public record,” the filing reads.

2 comments:

*Does as pardon for a crime that isn't being investigated endanger the finances of The Clinton Foundation not to mention Obama's image? *New evidence WILL arise and we all know that! So can't Trump at a later date charge her with new crimes?